6. There is therefore but one view that can be taken relative to the meaning of these words of our Lord, and that is that he thus spake, out of sacred regard for the Sabbath. For in his tender care for his people he had given them a precept that would require them to violate the Sabbath, should the moment for flight happen upon that day. For the command to flee was imperative the instant the promised signal should be seen, and the distance to Pella, where they found a place of refuge, was at least sixty miles. This prayer which the Saviour left with the disciples would cause them to remember the Sabbath whenever they should come before God. It was therefore impossible that the apostolic church should forget the day of sacred rest. Such a prayer, that they might not at a future time be compelled to violate the Sabbath, was a sure and certain means of perpetuating its sacred observance for the coming forty years, until the final destruction of Jerusalem, and was never forgotten by that early church, as we shall hereafter see.[290] The Saviour, who had taken unwearied pains during his whole ministry to show that the Sabbath was a merciful institution and to set aside those traditions by which it had been perverted from its true design, did, in this his last discourse, most tenderly commend the Sabbath to his people, uniting in the same petition their own safety and the sacredness of the rest-day of the Lord.[291] A few days after this discourse, the Lord of the Sabbath was nailed to the cross as the great sacrifice for the sins of men.[292] The Messiah was thus cut off in the midst of the seventieth week; and by his death he caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease.[293] Paul thus describes the abrogation of the typical system at the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus:— “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.... Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”[294]